Biodiversity impacts us all on so many levels (individual, population, biosphere). Without biodiversity, our health would be in rough shape!
Here are 4 amazing ways biodiversity contributes to our health:
- Your body contains roughly 100 trillion microbes such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, archaea and protozoa. They are essential to your survival and play a huge role in your general health and susceptibility to diseases (1,2).
- Pollinators’ diversity impacts the quantity, the diversity and the nutritional content of up to one third of the global food supply (1).
- Most antibiotics used today are of microbial origin (1,3). Researchers are constantly exploring microbial and plant diversity to find new treatments (1).
- Biodiversity plays a major role in mitigating climate change by sequestering carbon. Canada’s national parks alone are storing carbon for which service costs are between CAD$14 billion to 2.9 trillion. Biodiversity is also necessary for resilience of ecosystems, and reducing the risk and impacts of natural disaster (4).
We, as humans, have a duty to preserve our planet’s biodiversity. Biodiversity is resilience and adaptability and without it, there is no future for human health (5).
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